Romantic Pink Hawaii Wedding at Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko’ Olina

Melissa Baran
May 3, 2019
Categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog
Tags: Hawaii Venues

It’s not often that we see a wedding take place in the same exact spot that the proposal happened. But considering that location was Four Seasons Resort Ko’ Olina for this Bride & Groom, it was a no brainer. With the help of Moana Events, Alex and Steve celebrated in a sea of the prettiest pinks overlooking the water and with palm trees singing the sweetest whispers. If Hawaii is on your wedding destination list, you won’t want to miss one detail from their day, all captured by Brett Heidebrecht.

From the Bride and Groom… Our story is one that spans two cultures, three continents, and countless air miles. Steve is Chinese, was born in Japan, and grew up between Tokyo and San Francisco. Alex is English and grew up between Dubai and the UK. We first met in the Hamptons, where Alex happened by chance to visit on her very first weekend of a six-month secondment in New York. We soon became inseparable, and six months flew by, until the time Alex had to return to London. After that, it was a whirlwind of trips to see each other in London, New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Tokyo, and…Hawaii.

In January 2018, after two weeks of vacation in Hawaii and a few hours before our flight back home, Steve proposed to Alex on the secret beach at the Four Seasons Ko Olina. He does tend to leave things to the last minute, and it certainly guaranteed it was a surprise!

The beach was one of the most beautiful places we had ever seen. Following the proposal, Steve and the hotel arranged for an amazing private lunch surrounded by koi ponds and the lush greenery of the resort, and we decided then and there that this was where we wanted to get married! It was the easiest decision during our wedding planning journey.

Alex had been planning her hypothetical wedding since the Pinterest beta, and bringing together all those years of planning, while weaving in elements of Steve’s Chinese and Buddhist culture and Alex’s British wedding traditions, was going to be an ambitious task. Fortunately, Moana Events were amazing at helping us create one beautiful, unified vision, which was all at once colourful and sophisticated, with stunning floral canopies, Chinese-inspired plates and linens, and travel-themed décor.

We wanted the day to be both romantic and fun; for people to cry with happiness during the ceremony and laugh with happiness on the dancefloor. We also both love to eat, and so we wanted to make sure that we had incredible food (and lots of it!). Steve has been vegetarian for 20 years, and Alex is vegan, so we worked with the amazing Ashley Ong and Mason Kahiapo from the Four Seasons team to plan an incredible array of vegetarian canapes, a three-course vegetarian feast, and an incredible dessert bar, complete with crepes and ice cream sundae “live action” stations. Upcountry Creations were able to bake us the most delicious vegan cake. We are still receiving compliments to this day about how good the food was! Ashley went well beyond her official role of Catering Manager and had a hand in almost every aspect of making this the most incredible week of events that also included a fantastic rehearsal dinner at onsite Italian restaurant “Noe” (complete with their famous truffle tagliatelle) and a poolside morning-after brunch complete with lawn games.

On the day of the wedding, we woke up to rain – lots of it – and had a quite frantic morning liaising with planners and contractors to decide whether to move the celebrations inside. By lunchtime, it had not let up, but we stuck to Plan A and had everything set up outside. And we are so glad we did. By the time of the ceremony, the sun was shining, and as we looked across the lawn, at the incredible floating floral installations, the twinkling criss-crossing of lights above the lawn, and the chic cocktail lounge area, we were awestruck as the vision we had been working towards for nine months had become a reality. It was magical, and the day was absolutely perfect. (And we are so glad that the incredible Brett Heidebrecht and Elysium Productions team helped capture it all!)